(I recatagorized this post. The date it published should be Feb 17, 2019 @12:08)
In this reading, Sophie Woodward explains how ethnographic research about everyday clothing can help people understand sustainable consumption, and explore an approach to sustainable fashion. She begins the article by defining fashion as “practices of assemblage”, as part of our daily routine and consumption. Then she introduces how we should understand fashion and clothing from the people who wear and select them instead of a fashion system defined from the outside.
Before she shows the example of the relationship between jeans and sustainable in the reading, I would not expect wearing jeans could be a sustainable choice. I’ve heard so many news talking about how jeans is one of the most environmental unfriendly kind within textile industry. And textile industry ranks as the second that does the most pollution with our environment.
However, talking from the ethnography perspective, Woodward uses jeans as a perfect example of how people create a sustainable habit with something they already have in their wardrobes. As Woodward says, “New items that are purchased are often combined with things people already own, and the frequent shifts in fashion are often shifts such as the lowering of hemlines rather than complete shifts in types of clothing”. It really provides me a different way of thinking how sustainability can works.
The second-hand clothing market in Zambia also reminds me of a clothing exchanging market that I went to last month in Shanghai. People who went there just need to bring clothes that they think are no longer fashionable to them, and exchange them with others clothes. I think it also makes the clothes “accidently sustainable” which I hope societies can have more of this kind of event to attract individuals.